The present invention relates to wireless communications in general and, in particular, to satellite communications.
Broadband satellite services are gaining traction in North America. While such first generation satellite systems may provide multi-gigabit per second (Gbps) per satellite overall capacity, many current designs of such systems may inherently limit the number of customers who may be served with sufficient bandwidth. While existing designs have a number of capacity limitations, the demand for such broadband services continues to grow.
To meet such demands, multi-beam satellites may combine a number of high speed communication links with Variable Coding and Modulation (VCM) or Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM). According to the message type and the link condition, VCM and ACM transmitters utilize codes of various rates and sizes and modulations of different orders to take advantage of favorable channel conditions. Symbol timing acquisition and tracking can present difficult challenges in such an environment, and novel techniques may be useful in addressing these issues to increase capacity and meet this growing demand.